diff --git a/doc/user-guide.md b/doc/user-guide.md
index 2ec2c36b1a5..6ed8357989e 100644
--- a/doc/user-guide.md
+++ b/doc/user-guide.md
@@ -36,6 +36,7 @@ This installs the CLI binary `operator-sdk` at `$GOPATH/bin`.
 Use the CLI to create a new memcached-operator project:
 
 ```sh
+$ mkdir -p $GOPATH/src/github.com/example-inc/
 $ cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/example-inc/
 $ operator-sdk new memcached-operator --api-version=cache.example.com/v1alpha1 --kind=Memcached
 $ cd memcached-operator